Human rights group Katungod Sinirangan Bisayas – Karapatan slammed the illegal arrest of a peasant-leader and member of the alliance People Surge at around 7:30 in the morning last November 10, Friday. The farmer identified as Carlito “James” Badillo, age 41, from Marabut, Western Samar was captured by military officials at the village of Legaspi in the said town while on his way home after sending his children to Osmena National High School.

The escalating human rights abuses in Samar provinces, linked to a rising trend of military operations in peasant communities, has roused the New People’s Army (NPA) in Eastern Visayas to launch tactical offensives which left at least eleven (11) soldiers dead, according to the Efren Martires Command of the NPA in Eastern Visayas.

The National Operations Command of the New People’s Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines’ Central Committee declared at 10:00 in the morning today its termination of the communist guerilla’s unilateral interim ceasefire through its spokesperson Jorge ‘Ka Oris’ Madlos.

Amid several reports of violations of the Government of the Philippines’ armed forces’ own unilateral ceasefire, National Democratic Front chief negotiator Fidel Agcaoili expressed earnest concern over possible lifting of their side’s unilateral suspension of New People’s Army armed operations.